UPPER EAST SIDE, Manhattan (PIX11) — Mayor Eric Adams has echoed the NYPD’s call for New York City businesses to request customers remove their masks when entering, as the search continues for a hazmat suit-clad gunman wanted in four robberies, one of which turned deadly.
“Let’s be clear, some of these characters going into stores that are wearing their mask, they’re not doing it because they’re afraid of the pandemic,” Adams told PIX11 Morning News on Monday. “They’re doing it because they’re afraid of the police. We need to stop allowing them to exploit the safety of the pandemic by wearing masks.”
Last week, NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said that businesses could use the temporary removal of a mask as a “condition of entry” in an effort to reduce crimes, or at least make their perpetrators easier for police to identify and find.
Adams signed off on the idea as the NYPD asked for the public’s help finding a gunman in a hazmat suit and black face mask wanted in what’s believed to be a string of related robberies spanning three boroughs.
One of the incidents turned deadly late Friday, when a 67-year-old deli worker was fatally shot in the head during a robbery at his store near East 81st Street and Third Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, according to police.
Investigators have released surveillance images of the suspect from another incident in the Bronx, asking for tips to help track him down. He’s described as about 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds, is known to get around on a scooter, and, based on the thefts, is suspected to have a penchant for Newport cigarettes.
Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime Stoppers website at https://crimestoppers.nypdonline.org/ and on Twitter @NYPDTips. All calls are strictly confidential.
